(*) Every picture tells a story...

I rediscovered these and a few other photos in a pile of stuff M passed onto me when she was cleaning things up to move house the other day. Talk about some memories... I found my favourite pic of my very first girlfriend in there too, but I won't post that here... we still keep in regular touch too! PS. I wrote this post the other day - I only got about to posting it now tho! D'oh! lol

This was taken c.1988, when I was working 'out the back' of the Service Dept at Hanimex in Brookvale, Sydney. The snap was taken by one of the camera technicians, and the girl with the startled look just happened to be walking past the open doorway when the flash went off! It must have been cold that winter in that big open draughty warehouse building - jeans, jumper, overcoat. I note (with some worry - lol) that I had a 'mullet' (hairstyle) back in those days - ack! pmsl! I was playing bass in 'Montage' back in those distant days... that's how I can remember what period things are from - by which band I was with at the time! lol

This was my very first car - the glorious Datsun 120Y! I went everywhere in this little thing, which survived literally on the smell of an oily rag. It started to get far too small for me when I started to regularly play gigs where I needed to carry guitars and amps etc - there wasn't enough room in this little thing! I think the fastest I ever got it to was down a long hill (near here, actually!) to about 115 km/h - and you should have heard the poor thing screaming! hahahaa. I think I've never driven fast ever since because having the speed limitation in that thing - cruising the highways at 85 km/h!!! It was my nan's old car, and she gave it to me (yes - gave it to me - it's a spin to think of it that way!) the very day I first got my drivers licence (which, by the way, I got on the very first go - brag brag! lol). 1867 I think it was... this pic was taken by me atop North Head in Sydney, not too far from where I grew up.

Now... this is embarrassing! This is a self-portrait of me c.1984 - the longest I'd ever been allowed my hair to get, and I think I was going to get a haircut and a shave later that day! This was like a keepsake to remind me that I once had long hair! As a kid, I was permanently given no choice of short-back-and-sides... I laff now that, 20 years' later, my hair is longer than that, I once again have a beard, and now I wear glasses 24/7! (I only wore eye-glasses very rarely back then). I've still got those blue sunnies right here too! And - that shirt covered in redback spiders... ewww! What was I thinking...?!? Gotta love the token paisley shirt tho, eh? lol


This was taken towards the end of a friend's 21st party at Collaroy (Sydney) in July 1990 (I only know that because of the date stamp on the original pic!) It was one of those all-night-long dance-and-have-fun type things, and yes - I am as shagged out as I look here! lol.

This is great - dad (right) receiving his OAM (Order of Australia Medal) from the NSW Governor. Yup, dad had been involved in Scouting forever, I think. That's what he got this award for. I was so proud of him - and I told him too!

I didn't take this one, but it's the area I grew up in taken from the air. There's a big old lake about 2 blocks behind our old house, which was cool to play around. Manly is off to the left. Yes, there was plenty of trees in the northern beaches part of Sydney - not an endless terrain of red tiles like the rest of it, thankfully. The mess of buildings in the foreground is Brookvale and Warringah Mall... growing up, 'The Mall' was just a small shopping centre... now it's practically a small suburb in itself! Gees!

This one's a whole lot more recent - taken this arvo! It's the main Western Highway thru our town/city, looking east across to the hills of Yetholme. The darker strip of bitchumen on the left was laid afresh just last Sunday-week - a lot of interstate trucks travel thru here on their way to/from Sydney, supplying the whole region for 1,000 km west of here by road. You can just make the back of a white semi at the extreme left, obscured by the trees. We still have wooden telegraph poles out here, you realise. Middle-right is a classic red-painted tin roof... amazing they still have places like this out here, as it gets stinking hot in summer and practically snows mid-winter - urk under a hot tin roof! That patch of green above the treeline is about a 20 km unbroken stretch of the rolling open paddocks of the Bathurst Plains - that's the view from my place! Not bad, eh? Much better than a city of endless red roofs and TV aerials - for sure! At the bottom of this gentle slope, down to the left (and out-of-sight here), the town ends at the Macquarie River, a glorified stream in reality, but capable of great bloody-big floods about once every 10 to 20 years. It's about a 7-minute walk into the centre of town from here - which is off to the right. And yes, those blue skies really do stretch on forever out here...

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This week it's all about T-I-M-E!! =)

1. What time is it right now? 9.53pm, Monday evening (when I wrote this!)
2. What are you usually doing at this time on any given day? Writing or online with a CD or the radio on in the background, or reading, or watching TV.
3. Is there a day of the week that time seems to fly by faster than the other days? Whatever day it is when I'm with my boys!
4. If you could make ONE hour of each day twice as long, which hour of the day would you choose? 7am - I am NOT a morning person!
5. If you could make one DAY of the week twice as long, which day would you choose? Saturday - definitely.
6. If you could make one hour and/or one day HALF as long, which time of the day, and which day of the week would you choose? About 4pm on a Friday arvo.
7. Do you agree with the following statement? "The older you get, the faster time goes by." Absolutely, yes.
8. What do you usually do during your "down time?" Read, write, sleep.
9. What one thing do you spend more time doing each day than anything else? Eating? Sleeping? No, it'd be thinking - my brain is always 'on', and it drives me nuts somedays!

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Week 108
I say ... and you think ... ?

1. You’ve got a friend:: Greg Arnold & Dave Pye singing on-stage at BBHS 1981.
2. Immigration:: Australia's shame.
3. Waitress:: "There's a hair in my soup"... "But it's rabbit soup, sir!"
4. Snickers:: Underpants with a small snip missing...?
5. Recognize:: appreciation
6. Concept:: a man, a plan, a canal - Panama.
7. Birthday:: White Album
8. Told you so:: Iron Chef
9. Unlikely:: 100% pure undiluted happiness
10. Extension:: just a second more...

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On This 1st Day of March...
Born: Robert Lowell (poet, 1917); David Niven (actor, 1910); Roger Daltrey (The Who, 1944); Ron Howard (director, 1954); Chopin 1809; Harry Belafonte (singer, 1927).
Events: Cahill Expressway opens in Sydney.
Useless Trivia: a book for your collection (maybe...?): Johnston, Stowers 1964, Gay Bulgaria, Robert Hall, London.
My Soundtrack: "Gimme Shelter" Rolling Stones (1969 *****)
Weather: another gloriously sunny day 30c & practically cloudless.

There once was a man from Peru,
Whose limericks always ended on line two.

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Cyalayta

Email: mal [@] maljam [.] cjb [.] net
Message Board: http://malboard.cjb.net
"Excuse me, which way is the stage?" (Audience member, lost at Altamont, 1969.)

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